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So Moore’s law talks about the speed of processors doubling every so often (specifics aren’t that important at the moment). Invariably, games, apps and whatnot other myriad things come along to suck up that juice necessitating upgrades, new hardware and so on. It’s essentially a personal issue, however, one that, so long as Moore’s law stays unbroken, you can overcome it by buying or upgrading your computer or being conservative about the technology you use.

The bandwidth problem, however, has no equivalent Moore’s law. Even as faster wireless standards emerge, the series of tubes that make up the internets aren’t getting any fatter. And yet more and more race horses, poker chips, blow-up dolls and lottery balls will be being sent thru the tubes the more people go online. And already, at least in the states, our bandwidth is retarded compared to Europe (as in “being late” or “behind”). So I’m kinda sittin’ here wonderin’, y’know, what’s the big plan moving forward? Are we just waiting to turn on the dark fiber? If so, turn it on already! If not, ok, what? Lay more fiber? I mean, what’s to guarentee that, as we rely evermore on the cloud, that the pipes that we rely on to access it are going to be able to bare the burden? I mean car makers don’t built the roads — what is our civic interest — nay, duty — in making sure that we have unhindered, unthrottled bandwidth into the future?

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Chris, the fiber is down. The fiber was laid like a year or two ago. The problem with the slower speeds as compared to what consumers get in Europe is the Telcos, Verizon, and Time Warner: They’re greedy. Look at what we typically pay for a Broadband connection to the internet on the low scale. Then compare that to what European consumers pay on the low scale and you’ll see that we don’t get the same type of speed, quality of service or connection stabillity as the consumers in Europe, yet we’re paying twice as much. The telcos, Verizon and Time Warner have realized that the majority of US consumers aren’t going to question them so they keep doing what they do.

What needs to happen is that Google, Apple, Microsoft and another company like say Nokia, need to pool their resources together and create a network. A network that offers the same speeds and prices as comparable to Europe. When American consumers start switching in droves, then the telcos, Verizon and Time Warner will have to start doing the same in order to compete. With the whole Net Neutrality thing going on, this would actually save Google, Apple, Microsoft and any other company that joined in the partnership, a lot of money.